“Yes and no,” I said, catching on. “It’s staged.”
“Not staged, exactly, no. When I came out the other end of rehab, I had a vision. I saw how small and unambitious my earlier work had been, how by working in one medium at a time I was self-limiting. I also saw that the commerce of art is set up to fuck the artist. I produce a painting or a sculpture and depend on the largesse of some patron or decorator or collector or speculator to buy it. Then the gallery owner and the agent would feed on the money, leaving the scraps for me. Bullshit! I don’t know about you, Moe, but when I get fucked I want to enjoy it. Being an artist used to mean getting raped and then having to say thank you to the rapist. This place was my vision. It’s visual art, performance art, street art, participatory art. It’s living art that changes from second to second. It’s theater and chaos and it turns a big profit. Everything having to do with this place-from its seemingly inappropriate name to its kitsch and camp-was done on purpose with a purpose. Each decision was, at least to some degree, an artistic calculation. The only things left to chance are the people who walk through the doors to eat and drink.”
“Genius,” I said, not quite believing the word came out of my mouth. “You win both ways. The ones who get it get it, so it’s like knowing the secret handshake and being in an exclusive club. They get to enjoy the art and calculation. They get to feel superior, to laugh at the people who come here for a meal and are oblivious to the fact that they’re being messed about.”
He flinched. “No one’s being messed with here. If people come for a meal, they get a good meal. If they come because they think this is what the East Village was like in the time of punk, that’s what they get. I’m no more exploiting the people who walk into this restaurant than a photographer is exploiting the people behind the faces in a crowd shot. But somehow I don’t think you came here to talk old times or to discuss the philosophy of art. Why are you here?”
My answer was simple. “Robert Tillman.”
“Oh, everybody’s favorite stroke victim. Why do you want to know about him?”
“He’s my favorite too. I’m a fan.”
He laughed again. “You’re pretty funny, but that’s not an answer.”
“I’m working a case and his name came up. He used to work here in the kitchen with a guy named Tino Escobar.”
“Did you do all your homework this well when you were in school?”
“And I gave my teacher a shiny apple every day. About Tillman, why did you hire him?”
“Tillman was handsome in a rough sort of way. His looks appealed to my aesthetics and he was the best prep cook we’ve ever had.”
“The eaters don’t see the kitchen staff, so why does it matter how they look?” I asked.
“Everything matters. The art doesn’t stop at the kitchen door.”
“Whatever. So, Tino recommended Tillman to you?”
“You are a thorough bastard.” Martyr said. “Yes, Tino recommended him.”
“And why did Tillman leave?”
For the first time since I walked into the office, Nathan Martyr looked uncomfortable, his posture defensive. I repeated the question, loudly.
“Some of the staff… some of the women who worked here said he made them uneasy.”
“That’s pretty vague, Nathan. Uneasy how?”
“He was inappropriate with them.”
“Inappropriate. God, for a junkie you sure are a squeamish motherfucker. What are we talking about here?”
“I don’t know the whole story, but Natasha Romaine, one of our hostesses, quit abruptly and Abigail Dawtry, our head bartender, came to me and said Robert had cornered her in the bathroom after closing one night. She got out, but she said he scared the shit out of her, so I had to let him go.”
“Abigail working tonight?”
He ran his finger along a schedule taped on the wall next to his desk. “Sorry. Abby is off tonight.”
“Can I get her contact info and the info for the hostess that quit?”
“After what happened between us with Sashi, I suppose I owe you that much,” he said, tapping at a keyboard. “It’s printing.”
“I don’t suppose you know where Tino Escobar might be working these days? He left the High Line Bistro after Tillman’s death.”
“Sure, I know where Tino is,” Martyr said, handing me the sheets that had come out of the printer. “I rehired him. He’s in the kitchen. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
I followed Martyr down the hall, back into the restaurant, and through the kitchen doors. No matter what Nathan Martyr had said about every decision in the restaurant being a calculation, the kitchen was a working kitchen and didn’t look much different than any other restaurant kitchen I’d seen. I did, however, have to confess, that the cooks and even the guy at the dishwasher station were really a pretty attractive bunch.
“He’s over there, at the grill station,” Martyr said, turning to me.
Tino was coffee-skinned, about five-five and sturdily built, eyes facing the grill. He was handsome enough, but there was a distinct blankness to his face. It displayed the kinds of sharp corners and hard edges that only a rough life carves out of a man. Maybe it was the dance of the spitting flames that bathed his face or his stone-cold expression that gave me a chill, but whatever the reason, there are times when the cover tells you everything you need to know about the book inside. And what Tino Escobar’s cover told me, what it screamed at me, was that there was only one soul between the two of us.
“Tino,” Martyr called to his grill man. “Someone would like to speak to you.”
He turned his eyes up. They were as black and empty as a shark’s. Then everything happened at once. His expression went from icy to feral. I swore he sniffed the air for my scent like a wild animal checking if a rival predator had stepped into his territory. I may not have looked like a cop anymore, but I guess I still smelled like one. Escobar bolted, plowing right over the kid working the grill with him. As he darted through the kitchen to the side door, he made sweeping motions with his arms, knocking bubbling pots and full plates, glasses, and silverware behind him and in my path.
“Stop!” I shouted after him.
He didn’t stop. Go figure. The surprise was that I ran after him, through the side door onto 7th Street heading west. For once, the cancer in my belly wasn’t at issue. My surgically butchered knee, the arthritis that had developed in it, and my age all trumped the tumor. I didn’t think about my knee much anymore. It was just another injury, another wound, some scar tissue picked up along the way. That’s what aging is about: wounds and scar tissue. There were times it seemed that my life was not much more than a collection of both. But it was the wounds no one could see, the scars on the inside that were worst of all. Sometimes wounds are like a cascade and so it was with me. It was injuring my knee all those years ago that started the flood.
Escobar put more distance between us with each stride. Time was I could have reached around behind me and come up with something to make him think a little harder about running away. Problem was that in spite of my scent, I wasn’t a cop and I wasn’t going to pull out my. 38 on a busy Greenwich Village street. For all I knew, this was a misunderstanding, that Escobar might have been an illegal alien and thought I was an immigration agent. Half a block into the chase, I stopped running and watched Tino Escobar disappear into the crowd and the fallen darkness. Even without Escobar, I had made progress. Robert Tillman was now something more to me than an innocent corpse and I had the contact information for the two women who worked at Kid Charlemagne’s. I didn’t know how things would play out or if it would help explain why Alta and Maya had let Robert Tillman die. I didn’t know a lot of things, but for the first time since Carmella had asked for my help, I felt close to an answer. I felt it in my bones.
THIRTY-SIX
I knew something was up. Pam was standing just inside the door when I walked into my condo. It wasn’t that she hugged and kissed me. It was the way she hugged and kissed me: tentatively, almost shyly, as if we had an audience. And when I stepped out from the little alcove between the front door and my living room, I saw Carmella. She was sitting on the couch, a half-finished glass of beer in her hand.